Bikini or headscarf -- which offers more freedom?

By Krista Bremer

The Oprah Magazine

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/09/o.daughter.muslim.scarf/index.
html?hpt=Mid

* Mother remembers summers of wearing shorts, her feelings wearing first

bikini
* Her young daughter wants to wear headscarf for modesty
* Mom imagines scarf's magical powers protecting girl's unself-conscious
goodness

Nine years ago, I danced my newborn daughter around my North Carolina living
room to the music of "Free to Be...You and Me", the '70s children's classic
whose every lyric about tolerance and gender equality I had memorized as a
girl growing up in California.My Libyan-born husband, Ismail, sat with her
for hours on our screened porch, swaying back and forth on a creaky metal
rocker and singing old Arabic folk songs, and took her to a Muslim sheikh
who chanted a prayer for long life into her tiny, velvety ear.She had
espresso eyes and lush black lashes like her father's, and her milky-brown
skin darkened quickly in the summer sun. We named her Aliya, which means
"exalted" in Arabic, and agreed we would raise her to choose what she
identified with most from our dramatically different backgrounds.I secretly
felt smug about this agreement -- confident that she would favor my
comfortable American lifestyle over his modest Muslim upbringing. Ismail's
parents live in a squat stone house down a winding dirt alley outside
Tripoli. Its walls are bare except for passages from the Quran engraved onto
wood, its floors empty but for thin cushions that double as bedding at
night.My parents live in a sprawling home in Santa Fe with a three-car
garage, hundreds of channels on the flat-screen TV, organic food in the
refrigerator, and a closetful of toys for the grandchildren.Oprah.com: An
inheritance story you won't believe
<http://www.oprah.com/world/O-Magazines-Story-of-Sean-Sessums-Means-Heir-of-
Doris-Duke?cnn=yes> I imagined Aliya embracing shopping trips to Whole Foods
and the stack of presents under the Christmas tree, while still fully
appreciating the melodic sound of Arabic, the honey-soaked baklava Ismail
makes from scratch, the intricate henna tattoos her aunt drew on her feet
when we visited Libya. Not once did I imagine her falling for the head
covering worn by Muslim girls as an expression of modesty.Last summer we
were celebrating the end of Ramadan with our Muslim community at a festival
in the parking lot behind our local mosque. Children bounced in inflatable
fun houses while their parents sat beneath a plastic tarp nearby, shooing
flies from plates of curried chicken, golden rice, and baklava.Aliya and I
wandered past rows of vendors selling prayer mats, henna tattoos, and Muslim
clothing. When we reached a table displaying head coverings, Aliya turned to
me and pleaded, "Please, Mom -- can I have one?"She riffled through neatly
folded stacks of headscarves while the vendor, an African-American woman
shrouded in black, beamed at her. I had recently seen Aliya cast admiring
glances at Muslim girls her age.I quietly pitied them, covered in
floor-length skirts and long sleeves on even the hottest summer days, as my
best childhood memories were of my skin laid bare to the sun: feeling the
grass between my toes as I ran through the sprinkler on my front lawn;
wading into an icy river in Idaho, my shorts hitched up my thighs, to catch
my first rainbow trout; surfing a rolling emerald wave off the coast of
Hawaii. But Aliya envied these girls and had asked me to buy her clothes
like theirs. And now a headscarf.Oprah.com: How do you get your daughter to
talk to you?
<http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-to-Better-Communicate-with-Your-Daughter-As
k-Elizabeth?cnn=yes> In the past, my excuse was that they were hard to find
at our local mall, but here she was, offering to spend ten dollars from her
own allowance to buy the forest green rayon one she clutched in her hand. I
started to shake my head emphatically "no," but caught myself, remembering
my commitment to Ismail. So I gritted my teeth and bought it, assuming it
would soon be forgotten.That afternoon, as I was leaving for the grocery
store, Aliya called out from her room that she wanted to come.A moment later
she appeared at the top of the stairs -- or more accurately, half of her
did. From the waist down, she was my daughter: sneakers, bright socks, jeans
a little threadbare at the knees. But from the waist up, this girl was a
stranger. Her bright, round face was suspended in a tent of dark cloth like
a moon in a starless sky."Are you going to wear that?" I asked."Yeah," she
said slowly, in that tone she had recently begun to use with me when I state
the obvious.Oprah.com: Your kids are different...and it's okay
<http://www.oprah.com/world/Your-Kids-Are-Different-and-Its-Okay-David-Houle
?cnn=yes> On the way to the store, I stole glances at her in my rearview
mirror. She stared out the window in silence, appearing as aloof and
unconcerned as a Muslim dignitary visiting our small Southern town -- I,
merely her chauffeur.I bit my lip. I wanted to ask her to remove her head
covering before she got out of the car, but I couldn't think of a single
logical reason why, except that the sight of it made my blood pressure rise.
I'd always encouraged her to express her individuality and to resist peer
pressure, but now I felt as self-conscious and claustrophobic as if I were
wearing that headscarf myself.In the Food Lion parking lot, the heavy summer
air smothered my skin. I gathered the damp hair on my neck into a ponytail,
but Aliya seemed unfazed by the heat. We must have looked like an odd pair:
a tall blonde woman in a tank top and jeans cupping the hand of a
four-foot-tall Muslim. I drew my daughter closer and the skin on my bare
arms prickled -- as much from protective instinct as from the blast of
refrigerated air that hit me as I entered the store.As we maneuvered our
cart down the aisles, shoppers glanced at us like we were a riddle they
couldn't quite solve, quickly dropping their gaze when I caught their eye.In
the produce aisle, a woman reaching for an apple fixed me with an overly
bright, solicitous smile that said "I embrace diversity and I am perfectly
fine with your child." She looked so earnest, so painfully eager to put me
at ease, that I suddenly understood how it must feel to have a child with an
obvious disability, and all the curiosity or unwelcome sympathies from
strangers it evokes.At the checkout line, an elderly Southern woman clasped
her bony hands together and bent slowly down toward Aliya. "My, my," she
drawled, wobbling her head in disbelief. "Don't you look absolutely
precious!" My daughter smiled politely, then turned to ask me for a pack of
gum.In the following days, Aliya wore her headscarf to the breakfast table
over her pajamas, to a Muslim gathering where she was showered with
compliments, and to the park, where the moms with whom I chatted on the
bench studiously avoided mentioning it altogether.Oprah.com: Why her faith
is colliding with her workout routine
<http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Thirty-Something/5#slide> Later that week,
at our local pool, I watched a girl only a few years older than Aliya play
Ping-Pong with a boy her age. She was caught in that awkward territory
between childhood and adolescence -- narrow hips, skinny legs, the slightest
swelling of new breasts -- and she wore a string bikini.Her opponent wore an
oversize T-shirt and baggy trunks that fell below his knees, and when he
slammed the ball at her, she lunged for it while trying with one hand to
keep the slippery strips of spandex in place. I wanted to offer her a towel
to wrap around her hips, so she could lose herself in the contest and feel
the exhilaration of making a perfect shot.It was easy to see why she was
getting demolished at this game: Her near-naked body was consuming her
focus. And in her pained expression I recognized the familiar mix of shame
and excitement I felt when I first wore a bikini.At 14, I skittered down the
halls of high school like a squirrel in traffic: hugging the walls, changing
direction in midstream, darting for cover. Then I went to Los Angeles to
visit my aunt Mary during winter break. Mary collected mermaids, kept a
black-and-white photo of her long-haired Indian guru on her dresser, and
shopped at a tiny health food store that smelled of patchouli and peanut
butter. She took me to Venice Beach, where I bought a cheap bikini from a
street vendor.Dizzy with the promise of an impossibly bright afternoon, I
thought I could be someone else -- glistening and proud like the greased-up
bodybuilders on the lawn, relaxed and unself-conscious as the hippies who
lounged on the pavement with lit incense tucked behind their ears. In a
beachside bathroom with gritty cement floors, I changed into my new
two-piece suit.Goose bumps spread across my chubby white tummy and the downy
white hairs on my thighs stood on end -- I felt as raw and exposed as a
turtle stripped of its shell. And when I left the bathroom, the stares of
men seemed to pin me in one spot even as I walked by.In spite of a strange
and mounting sense of shame, I was riveted by their smirking faces; in their
suggestive expressions I thought I glimpsed some vital clue to the mystery
of myself. What did these men see in me -- what was this strange power
surging between us, this rapidly shifting current that one moment made me
feel powerful and the next unspeakably vulnerable?I imagined Aliya in a
string bikini in a few years. Then I imagined her draped in Muslim attire.
It was hard to say which image was more unsettling. I thought then of
something a Sufi Muslim friend had told me: that Sufis believe our essence
radiates beyond our physical bodies -- that we have a sort of energetic
second skin, which is extremely sensitive and permeable to everyone we
encounter. Muslim men and women wear modest clothing, she said, to protect
this charged space between them and the world.Growing up in the '70s in
Southern California, I had learned that freedom for women meant, among other
things, fewer clothes, and that women could be anything -- and still look
good in a bikini. Exploring my physical freedom had been an important part
of my process of self-discovery, but the exposure had come at a
price.Oprah.com: Why women are the future of education
<http://www.oprah.com/world/Gender-and-the-Future-of-Education-Trends-David-
Houle> Since that day in Venice Beach, I'd spent years learning to swim in
the turbulent currents of attraction -- wanting to be desired, resisting
others' unwelcome advances, plumbing the mysterious depths of my own
longing.I'd spent countless hours studying my reflection in the mirror --
admiring it, hating it, wondering what others thought of it -- and it
sometimes seemed to me that if I had applied the same relentless scrutiny to
another subject I could have become enlightened, written a novel, or at
least figured out how to grow an organic vegetable garden.On a recent
Saturday morning, in the crowded dressing room of a large department store,
I tried on designer jeans alongside college girls in stiletto heels, young
mothers with babies fussing in their strollers, and middle-aged women with
glossed lips pursed into frowns. One by one we filed into changing rooms,
then lined up to take our turn on a brightly lit pedestal surrounded by
mirrors, cocking our hips and sucking in our tummies and craning our necks
to stare at our rear ends.When it was my turn, my heart felt as tight in my
chest as my legs did in the jeans. My face looked drawn under the
fluorescent lights, and suddenly I was exhausted by all the years I'd spent
doggedly chasing the carrot of self-improvement, while dragging behind me a
heavy cart of self-criticism.At this stage in her life, Aliya is captivated
by the world around her -- not by what she sees in the mirror. Last summer
she stood at the edge of the Blue Ridge Parkway, stared at the blue-black
outline of the mountains in the distance, their tips swaddled by cottony
clouds, and gasped. "This is the most beautiful thing I ever saw," she
whispered. Her wide-open eyes were a mirror of all that beauty, and she
stood so still that she blended into the lush landscape, until finally we
broke her reverie by tugging at her arm and pulling her back to the car.At
school it's different. In her fourth-grade class, girls already draw a
connection between clothing and popularity. A few weeks ago, her voice rose
in anger as she told me about a classmate who had ranked all the girls in
class according to how stylish they were.I understood then that while
physical exposure had liberated me in some ways, Aliya could discover an
entirely different type of freedom by choosing to cover herself.I have no
idea how long Aliya's interest in Muslim clothing will last. If she chooses
to embrace Islam, I trust the faith will bring her tolerance, humility, and
a sense of justice -- the way it has done for her father. And because I have
a strong desire to protect her, I will also worry that her choice could make
life in her own country difficult. She has recently memorized the fatiha,
the opening verse of the Quran, and she is pressing her father to teach her
Arabic. She's also becoming an agile mountain biker who rides with me on
wooded trails, mud spraying her calves as she navigates the swollen
creek.The other day, when I dropped her off at school, instead of driving
away from the curb in a rush as I usually do, I watched her walk into a
crowd of kids, bent forward under the weight of her backpack as if she were
bracing against a storm. She moved purposefully, in such a solitary way --
so different from the way I was at her age, and I realized once again how
mysterious she is to me.It's not just her head covering that makes her so:
It's her lack of concern for what others think about her. It's finding her
stash of Halloween candy untouched in her drawer, while I was a child
obsessed with sweets. It's the fact that she would rather dive into a book
than into the ocean -- that she gets so consumed with her reading that she
can't hear me calling her from the next room.I watched her kneel at the
entryway to her school and pull a neatly folded cloth from the front of her
pack, where other kids stash bubble gum or lip gloss. Then she slipped it
over her head, and her shoulders disappeared beneath it like the cape her
younger brother wears when he pretends to be a superhero.As I pulled away
from the curb, I imagined that headscarf having magical powers to protect
her boundless imagination, her keen perception, and her unself-conscious
goodness. I imagined it shielding her as she journeys through that house of
mirrors where so many young women get trapped in adolescence, buffering her
from the dissatisfaction that clings in spite of the growing number of
choices at our fingertips, providing safe cover as she takes flight into a
future I can only imagine.Oprah.com: Moms pass down their best beauty
secrets <http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Passing-Down-the-Beauty/cnn=yes> Krista
Bremer is the winner of a 2008 Pushcart Prize and a 2009 Rona Jaffe
Foundation Writers' Award. She is associate publisher of the literary
magazine The Sun, and she is writing a memoir about her bicultural marriage
 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/09/o.daughter.muslim.scarf/index.
html?hpt=Mid